French engineer and fashion designer Louis Réard revealed the first modern bikini, modeled by Micheline Bernardini, at a the Piscine Molitor in Paris.
Louis Réard had been unable to find a fashion model to wear the two piece barely there swimwear, which he'd renamed for the location of the American atomic tests earlier that week, so he hired Bernardini, who was an 18 year old nude dancer. She later moved to Australia, but reprised the photo shoot at age 58.
The scandalous nature of the swimsuit is somewhat misunderstood. Two piece women's swimsuits had been on the market since the 1930s. The popular thesis that the scandal had something to do with merely being two piece is in error, as is the myth that the upper garment, not the lower, created the scandal. It was actually the latter, as the waste line of the bikini was dropped down so that the naval was exposed, which was not the case with earlier two piece suits. Réard received thousands of supporting letters, mostly from men.
Regarding the pool, the title character of Yann Martel's novel Life of Pi is named after the Piscine Molitor.
While we have often died the decline into sexual immorality in the west to the December 1953 introduction of Playboy, this does demonstrate that the antecedents of that had been going on for some time, and were accelerating post World War Two. Even the very first bikini, worn on this day, effectively left nothing for the imagination. Current ones are effectively being nude in public without getting arrested.
July 5 is National Bikini Day.
Last edition:
